Hillsboro crossbow shooting victim featured in Premier Health video

Promotional film details recovery of woman shot with arrow

By David Wright - dwright@timesgazette.com

A woman who was shot with a crossbow earlier this year in Hillsboro was recently featured in a promotional video by Premier Health/Miami Valley Hospital, with doctors and others involved in the incident describing how they helped Kelley Boucher survive her injuries.

The video includes interviews with Boucher, whose boyfriend, Ian Cluxton, shot her with a crossbow at a home on East Walnut Street in March. Authorities said Cluxton shot Boucher in the upper torso while their child was standing between the two. Police said the shooting was intentional.

Pam Cluxton, Ian Cluxton’s mother, said in the video that after Cluxton shot Boucher, he “was just dumbstruck… he couldn’t even move, he couldn’t even speak. He was just sitting there staring.”

Promotional material released with the video says the shooting was accidental, although Cluxton was criminally charged and is now serving a two-year prison sentence for the incident.

As previously reported, Boucher was taken to Highland District Hospital and evacuated via CareFlight to Miami Valley Hospital, which has a Level I trauma center.

Dr. Akpofure Peter Ekeh, a trauma surgeon at Miami Valley, said in the video that the injury was one of the more unusual cases he’s seen.

“It was quite an interesting site,” Ekeh said. “Something that, you know, even after many years of doing this, I don’t see often.”

According to Ekeh, the arrow entered the right side of her chest and was visible on the left side, having pierced her heart and stomach.

“It had not only gone through her chest, it had gone through her heart,” he said. “We knew right there what we were dealing with.”

Because of the heart injury, Boucher was sent to cardiac surgery under the care of Dr. Syed Zaman. In the video, Zaman said he was concerned that if doctors pulled the arrow out, “the heart would just completely fall apart.”

According to Zaman, doctors were able to remove the arrow and seal the holes in Boucher’s heart.

“We did whatever we needed to do to make sure the repair was as secure as possible,” Zaman said.

Boucher said doctors were surprised at how well she recovered.

“I didn’t really know where I got hit in all my organs until after I did the visit when he took my staples out of my stomach,” Boucher said. “I’m grateful that I had a team that worked on me and removed it and sewed me up. If it weren’t for all these people, my son would have no mother right now.”

After the incident, Cluxton was taken into custody and charged with felonious assault, a second-degree felony, and endangering children, a first-degree misdemeanor. He was indicted in May on two counts of felonious assault and one count of endangering children.

Cluxton pled guilty to one count of felonious assault in July and was sentenced to two years in prison. The second felonious assault charge and the endangering children charge were dropped as part of a plea agreement.

Pam Cluxton said in the video that Boucher would not have survived if she had not been taken to Miami Valley, and credited the Miami Valley staff with her recovery.

“You would never know today that she had been through that trauma or through all those surgeries or anything,” Pam Cluxton said. “She’s back to the good old Kelley we all knew.”